A LONDONER who lost six family members in the Grenfell Tower fire said authorities failed to help him in the desperate search for his loved ones in the aftermath of the blaze. 

Hisam Choucair lost his mother Sirria, his sister Nadia and her husband Bassem Choukair, along with their young children Mierna, Fatima and Zainab, who all lived on the 22nd floor of the west London tower block. 

Giving evidence to the Grenfell Inquiry today, Mr Choucair said he went to 11 different hospitals in search of his family, including King’s College Hospital in south London, seven miles away, and all of the listed emergency centres. 

At each centre he said he did not find anyone from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council, the block’s tenant management organisation (TMO) or the government. 

He described his experience as being sent from “trauma to trauma.” 

“It was like the inside of your gut was being ripped up. It was that sort of feeling. The lack of communication, the lack of updates, the challenges,” he told the inquiry. 

“We didn’t get no update from the police, nobody from the TMO of the council called us despite having our numbers.”

In a sign of utter desperation, Mr Choucair said he ran into St Thomas’s intensive care ward, drawing back the curtains of patients’ beds to find his loved ones. “All I can say is I’m sorry to whoever’s privacy I invaded but it was through desperation,” he said. 

Mr Choucair, a former Transport for London worker, said he would have expected people from the government or council to be on site to assist families in the process of trying to find family members. “I was expecting some sort of order in place.” 

Another source of frustration came when Mr Choucair tried to ring a police casualty bureau number for people trying to get information about loved ones, but the line continually rang off. 

When he returned to the Grenfell area he said that the streets were full of people bringing in supplies. 

“It was something amazing I had never seen before and it put the local authority to shame.”

He said that feeling of community stays with him when he thinks of the “crooks who are still hiding until today and blaming each other for what occurred.”  

Mr Choucair said he had to wait weeks before his family were formally identified as having perished in the blaze. 

He concluded his evidence by urging the inquiry to look deeper into the issue of racism as being a factor behind the “lack of urgency” shown by authorities on the day.